What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that assists organizations to develop products, services, processes, and strategies.  It is an iterative and collaborative problem solving process that focuses on empathy.

Traditional Thinking

Improves existing ideas

Understand usage

Who and what focus

Employs objective analysis

Problem solving

Flawless planning

Design Thinking

Inspires new ideas

Understand motivation

How and why focus

Engages empathetic experiences

Opportunity generating

Enlightened trial and error

Divergent & Convergent Work

The beginning of the design thinking process is characterized by divergent work. Divergent work generates new ideas and approaches for a team to examine and test. This gives a team many options to choose from.

Discover

Interpret

Ideate

Experiment

Implement

As the work proceeds, it becomes convergent. The team chooses specific ideas, experiments with, and implements those ideas.

Discover

I have a challenge. How do I approach it?

During this phase, you should be:

  • Asking “What matters to this person?”
  • Connecting through empathy
  • Interviewing users
  • Writing observations
  • Understanding aspirations and motivations

View Discover Plays

Interpret

I learned something. How do I interpret it?

During this phase, you should be:

  • Define needs, patterns and trends
  • Identify themes, insights and principles
  • Reframe the challenge based on insights

View Interpret Plays

Ideate

I see an opportunity. What do I create?

During this phase, you should be:

  • Generating new ideas (more is better!)
  • Imagining what might be created
  • Redefining ideas
  • Add constraints

View Ideate Plays

Experiment

I have an idea. How do I build it?

During this phase, you should be:

  • Building rapid prototypes
  • Ensuring all ideas can be shown visually
  • Seeking feedback on your work
  • Validate your idea

View Experiment Plays

Implement

I tried something new. How do I evolve it?

During this phase, you should be:

  • Keeping track of what you have learned
  • Asking “How can we improve this?”
  • Returning to “discover” to make a plan for next steps

View Implementation Plays

More Design Thinking Resources